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by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Awkwardness, M/M, Mild emotional hurt/comfort, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Sharing a Bed, Vulnerability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-04 16:22:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12774837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: That had been strange enough at the time. He’d never seen Hawke in a foul mood in his life, not even back in Kirkwall. Not even when the city was falling apart around them and Cullen had had to make a choice he’d never in his life wanted to make, had never thought he would have to make. Even Kinloch hadn’t prepared him for what happened in Kirkwall. But when he’d come back from the Fade, it hadn’t been a pretty sight.





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**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamkist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamkist/gifts).



It wasn’t that Cullen paid special attention to Hawke. Nobody in Cullen’s position would have had the time for one thing and for another Cullen wasn’t the sort to dwell on the lives of other people. He already concerned himself too much with the ramifications on his actions, how what he does will affect the people who trusted him to lead them effectively and safely through this crisis. That burden he shared with the Inquisitor and his fellow advisers, but sometimes it got to be too much if he stopped and truly thought about it. Which was why he didn’t. He did what he had to do and the chips would fall where they would. It was how he made the hard calls and suggested to the Inquisitor that she make the hard calls, too.

So far, it had worked out.

But leave it to Hawke to interfere with his perfectly serviceable strategy by merely showing up.

And not just showing up, no, but by going to the Fade, physically, because that made sense to Cullen, who’d never heard of such a thing happening since the days of the Tevinter magisters of old.

“Well,” he’d said, as soon as they’d returned, “as long as it doesn’t release a Blight on us all, I suppose we’re still one up on Warden Surana.” The Inquisitor, grim, had offered him a tight smile, her eyes flashing. She wouldn’t berate him in front of the others, but now was not the time. Clearing his throat, he’d nodded in acquiescence. They’d developed a rapport. All of them had. It was a relief to know what at least one person thought, not least of all because Hawke had stared at him with wide eyes, mouth slightly open, slow to answer when he had always been the quickest wit in the room before.

Finally, he’d said, adopting an obviously feigned cheer, “It’s so good to know I’m not the one to stick my foot in my mouth this time. How refreshing.”

That had been strange enough at the time. He’d never seen Hawke in a foul mood in his life, not even back in Kirkwall. Not even when the city was falling apart around them and Cullen had had to make a choice he’d never in his life wanted to make, had never thought he would have to make. Even Kinloch hadn’t prepared him for what happened in Kirkwall. But when he’d come back from the Fade, it hadn’t been a pretty sight.

It was no different now, Hawke’s pique wasn’t, as he learned when a curt knock sounded at his office door and before he could so much as say, _come in,_ Hawke was barging in, a rather large skin of what Cullen suspected was not water in his hand and a frown on his mouth that made him seem far from the approachable man Cullen had always known.

“Excuse me,” Cullen said, turning his full attention to Hawke rather than keeping it on the missive before him where it belonged. He tried to sound affronted by the rudeness of Hawke’s disruption, but when he fully grasped the severity of the situation, he kept his mouth shut. Hawke really did look awful. Purplish shadows brushed at the skin under his eyes and his mouth, normally so mobile, held a brittleness that suggested to Cullen that the stiffness of his lips would shatter into grief at any moment. “What’s the matter?” he asked instead. Hawke didn’t need to be berated, and seeing as how he hadn’t made a habit of barging into Cullen’s rooms before, he didn’t anticipate it would be much of an issue going forward if Cullen handled this right.

“Not a thing,” Hawke replied in a fragile tone, too light to be anything but a ruse. He’d known Hawke for what seemed like forever under the strangest circumstances Thedas could throw at them. They weren’t close, but Cullen knew shit when he smelled it.

“Then can I help you with something?” he asked instead of pushing for an answer Hawke wasn’t likely to give. Frustration bubbled up in him, gentle as a slow-moving creek, but persistent. He did have work to do and whatever it was Hawke wanted, he wasn’t going to make it easy for Cullen. Cullen could already tell that much. “There is much yet left to do. I fear—”

“Varric cut me off,” he said instead of answering. Cullen could only assume he meant his drink. Not that that had stopped Hawke, he saw. “And suggested I find a bed for the night.”

Cullen’s eyes narrowed and his cheeks flamed with the sudden heat of embarrassment. “You won’t find one here.”

Hawke’s eyes immediately honed in on the flat overhead, his eyebrow quirking. That only made Cullen blush all the fiercer. He stared down at his desk, threatening to bore a hole in it with his mind. If only he was a mage; he might have lit it on fire then. Through gritted teeth, Cullen answered, “Not for you.”

“Pity,” Hawke said, finding his footing a little more. Perhaps this was all he needed: to make fun of Cullen. If that was the case, Cullen would deal with it.

He’d just deal with it while he finished his work. “For you, perhaps.”

“You are a fine specimen of former Templarhood, I will give you that.”

Cullen’s quill dripped ink onto the parchment he was writing on, the blotch spreading unheeded as Cullen lifted his head again. He supposed he must have looked foolish, mouth open, eyes probably disbelieving. “You can’t be serious.”

Hawke sighed. “I am, sadly.” He lifted the skin to his mouth; his throat worked as he swallowed entirely too much liquor to be good for him. Cullen would have been impressed if he wasn’t maybe a little bit worried. It wasn’t his job to concern himself with Hawke’s feelings, and yet, Hawke was clearly hurting. About what, Cullen couldn’t even begin to guess. “You don’t want to take pity on a poor mage, do you? I hear you’ve reformed yourself. Gone all soft on magic.” He eyed the spot where a certain bit of Cullen’s anatomy resided. Luckily, it was hidden by the desk. “Not too soft, I hope.”

“Whatever you’re trying to get out of me,” Cullen said, “it’s not going to work.” But he shifted a little and realized that, in at least one respect, it was working. Now that the idea was in his head, he wanted nothing more than to take him up there and divest him of his clothing and then distract him for as long as was necessary for them both to forget their troubles for a while.

If Cullen was being entirely honest, he wasn’t in a place where relations would do him much good. And whatever hell Hawke was currently mired in, he probably wouldn’t be any better off in the end than Cullen.

“If this is because of the Fade…”

 _That,_ at least, got a rise out of Hawke. His body froze and his attention seemed to snap like the long tail of a whip being cracked. Anger perched itself on his shoulders, hunching them under the strain of that weight. “This is not because of that place,” he replied, as cold as Cullen had ever heard him, as devoid of anything approaching friendliness. The icy calm of a just-frozen over lake might have compared. Take too many steps onto it and find yourself under the threat of drowning when you felt through. “It’s not about anything other than me finding you attractive and you being available finally. What with the lack of vows and everything.”

“Templars rarely kept their vows,” he answered, tight. “You should know that.”

“But you did,” Hawke pointed out. “I always admired you for that and hated you for it.”

Cullen scoffed. “Oh, please,” he said, now embarrassed and annoyed. “That was hardly the biggest sacrifice I made for the Order.” Shifting slightly, he looked past Hawke to the wall behind him. People and their ideas about Templars, if they weren’t completely wrong about them in one way, they were completely wrong in another. “Find something better to admire in me if you must.”

“Well, there are your delightfully amber eyes.”

Said eyes were rolled. “Charming.”

At that, Hawke fluttered his eyelashes and formed an awkward pout with his mouth. “I think so. Come on, you have to admit: there was something between us back then, wasn’t there?”

“A massive amount of death and destruction maybe,” Cullen said. Rolling his shoulders, he looked away and bit his lip. Whatever answer Hawke wanted from him, he wasn’t going to get it. To be honest, Cullen _didn’t_ notice anything between them. He couldn’t let himself. He wouldn’t have wanted to. He hadn’t trusted mages then. And though Hawke had proven himself to Cullen several times over, he shuddered to think what anything between them would have looked like. Bad was his quick and dirty assessment.

But still. Hawke was a good man. He didn’t deserve the demons—metaphorical, he thought in this case—that haunted him. Neither did Cullen, but Cullen couldn’t do anything about his own. He could, at least, offer some comfort. What he could of it anyway.

With a sigh, he placed his quill back in the jar of ink he should have stoppered instead. It was early yet, earlier than Cullen usually quit working, but he supposed he could make one exception this one time. “You’re leaving for Weisshaupt soon, are you not?”

“Indeed,” Hawke said with false cheer. He took another swig of his drink and hissed. “Tomorrow, in point of fact.”

Cullen swallowed and wished for a drink of his own. “For how long?”

Hawke shrugged and found something of interest in the far corner of the room to stare at instead of Cullen. “I don’t know. Too long no matter what. I hear it’s cold up there. I was never much fond of the cold.”

Cullen sighed and got to his feet. He couldn’t give Hawke what he wanted, but he could possibly let him have something of equal value. “Come on,” he said, gesturing toward the ladder. He slapped his hand against the wood and jerked his head.

“So you are going to take me to bed,” he said with a laugh, but in such a way that Cullen didn’t get the impression he expected anything so very physical out of it. That wasn’t exactly true, but Cullen also wasn’t going to be wooed to action by his words.

“Something like that,” he replied. “Up. Go.”

“Yes, sir.”

With another roll of his eyes, he climbed up behind Hawke and refused to feel all the insecurities that having another person up here released in him.

“Did you know there’s a hole in your ceiling?” Hawke asked, doing his damnedest to make Cullen feel even more insecure about it.

Gruff, he said, “Yes, I like the stars,” and nudged Hawke toward the bed.

“And the freezing cold temperatures?”

“It’s not so bad with blankets and furs. Besides, you wanted up here.”

“I’m not so sure about that now.” He squinted. “What are we even doing?”

Cullen frowned and refused to talk himself out of this; it was, perhaps, a little silly. And perhaps Hawke wouldn’t understand. But all Cullen could do was try and hope that just being near another person would help. He shucked his armor as quickly as possible and indicated that Hawke should do some of the same with his robes. “Some of the younger children in the Chantry would get scared when they first got there,” he said. “They’d go to the older kids when they had nightmares.”

Hawke wrinkled his nose. “I think I know where this is going.”

“Look.” Cullen pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s this or meditating through the night. I don’t know a whole lot of other ways to handle stress.”

A grimace crossed Hawke’s face. “You’re sure we can’t just—” He waved his hand to indicate what might have been if Hawke had his way.

“Maybe when you come back from Weisshaupt.” He sighed. “I’m not opposed to the idea. I—”

“Care about you with a deep and abiding passion that transcends entirely rational offers?”

Shaking his head and laughing, Cullen shoved at his shoulder. “All you do is talk,” Cullen replied. “Just—breathe and lie back, okay?”

“I’m trusting you here to ensure I don’t end up looking foolish,” Hawke pointed out, but he did what Cullen asked and that was the important thing. Unfortunately, the bed wasn’t big enough for two grown men to share the way Cullen wanted to, so he had to improvise. Slipping behind him, he shimmied into an almost appropriate position, Hawke half-draped on him. They were clothed still, mostly, but Hawke’s heat bled through to Cullen anyway.

“We used to lay next to one another and do breathing exercises.”

“Weird.”

“It worked. Just—do what I do, okay?” Cullen was pretty good at this, even he could admit it. The skill had gotten him through quite a few recent nights, too, while his head swam and his body twitched through Lyrium withdrawals. If Cullen found it better this way, another person next to him, warm and alive and breathing just as deeply as he did, he didn’t mention it. And if he liked it even better that it was Hawke, he couldn’t admit that yet either. It didn’t seem fair.

Damn the man. Always causing trouble.

“This is,” Hawke said after a long while, reluctant, “rather nice, I must say.”

Feeling freer than he’d felt in… such a very long time, Cullen smiled. “It is. I told you so.”

“Yes, yes.” Hawke’s hand made a lazy loop through the air. Almost as quickly, he shoved himself up and flipped, chest-to-chest with Cullen. His features did look more relaxed at least, everything a little more agile and softer than when he’d first arrived. “Can I stay the night? Not for… well. You know. Just because.”

“The Fade was that bad, wasn’t it?” He’d never thought of what it might be like, but he remembered Harrowings. It can’t have been easy for Hawke going there physically—and then leaving behind a friend. Cullen ached for him a bit, ached for the loss of it. He wouldn’t have turned down Hawke even if he wanted to.

“A little.”

And though Cullen knew better, knew that he shouldn’t have broached this, not now, not like this, he leaned up and pressed a kiss against Hawke’s mouth. It was as chaste as such a thing could be given what they’d discussed earlier. Hawke didn’t push for more, but he seemed warmer in his regard for Cullen than before, too. “I guess I have reason to come back from Weisshaupt now.”

Cullen may have felt a keener regard for Hawke as well. “You do.”

“I’ll whip them into shape in no time with motivation like that,” he promised.

And then preceded to do just that.

And this time, when he traipsed into Cullen’s office, he was ready.


End file.
